Sylvester Stallone And Arnold Schwarzenegger Hated Each Other In The '80s

The two actors have a new movie out this weekend,
"Escape Plan," but in the '80s, Stallone says the two couldn't
stand one another.Dave Kotinsky /
Getty Images

Sylvester Stallone has revealed
that he andArnold Schwarzeneggershared such a “violent hatred” for each
other during the Eighties that “even our DNA hated each
other”.

The 67-year-old action star told US talk show host David Letterman of the extent of their
rivalry during an interview this week.

“We had a violent hatred,” he said. “Have you ever had that ever?
Competition where you really had an arch enemy that kind of
brings out the best in you. As Arnold would say, it really pushed
you to accelerate.”

The animosity between the pair was so bad that Stallone stated
that he hated “that [Schwarzenegger] was on the planet,
basically.”

But the intensity of his dislike for Schwarzenegger had the
advantage of encouraging Stallone to raise his game at a time
when his rival was starring in box office hits such as
The Terminator and Conan the Barbarian.

“After a while, I started to like this competition, this
one-upmanship. He’d get a bigger gun. I’d shoot more people. He’d
shoot more people. But then, he went into science fiction, which
kind of left me behind.”

Stallone hit the big time with a starring role in the acclaimed
1976 film Rocky, which he also co-wrote. The Rocky
series continued throughout the Eighties, but Schwarzenegger’s
fame threatened to eclipse Stallone's with a string of successful
actions films, including Predator, Commando and The Running Man.

However, the pair have now put their troubled relationship behind
them. In 2010, they starred in The Expendables together with a
supporting cast of action hero royalty, a franchise which has
since spawned two sequels.

They can now be seen together in Escape Plan, released in cinemas this
weekend. Stallone plays a structural engineer who ends up behind
bars as a result of being framed. There he meets his cellmate,
played by Schwarzenegger, and the pair engage in a battle to
escape the maximum security prison.

“Now we have this mutual respect, we’re survivors, and now it’s
like, ‘You know what? This guy is pretty special,’” Stallone said
of his current relationship with Schwarzenegger.

This is not the first time Stallone has made candid revelations about his co-stars. In
August, he announced on Twitter that Harrison Ford would be replacing
Bruce Willis in the newest Expendables
films. He added that he had been waiting years for such news, and
described Willis as “greedy and lazy…a sure formula for career
failure.”